David Malachowski interviews Ernie Williams in 2008

From left, David Malachowski and Ernie Williams warm up the crowd before Chubby Checker takes the stage during the Alive at Five concert at the Corning Preserve rain location under I-787 in Albany, NY on June 10, 2010. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

The following article was originally published in the Times Union on Jan. 31, 2008

Bluesman bash

The best gift for Ernie Williams’ birthday? Music for his fansDAVID MALACHOWSKI Special to the Times Union

“Hey Ernie! How are ya?” During a brief stop for food and fuel at a convenient store off the Northway, a fan is, well, a bit overexcited to see Ernie Williams walk in.

Williams, who offstage can seem more like a mayor than a musician, is used to it: All over upstate New York, folks yell out greetings, stop to say hello, shake hands.
For me, I’m lucky. I get to play guitar with the 83-year-old bluesman as a substitute for his regular guitarist Jason Ladayne – including Saturday’s performance at WAMC Performing Arts Studio.

Traveling down the road en route to a gig, he always tells stories of the old days, of a world when “black was black and white was white,” and nothing in between. Surprisingly, he talks without a hint of judgment or bitterness.

Williams lives in a small house on a dead-end street in Cohoes, with a backyard big enough for a big dog and garden, and a garage for all his projects. The living room walls are lined with photos of his family and career – sure signs of a well-lived life.

Williams is dressed up in a sharp shirt and hat sitting in his recliner, while his wife, Kathy – whom Williams calls Kitty Kat – and longtime bandleader and saxophonist Charlie Vatalaro sit on an overstuffed couch. Copious cookies were on a tray within reach.

Born in Virginia, Williams came to music and singing by way of the church, which is common, but his motivation was somewhat uncommon: fear of the dark. “I started out singing in church down South,” Williams said. “If you did not sing, the old people said you had to walk home. It was so dark in the country, you could not see your hand in front of you. It was either sing gospel or walk home … (and) I didn’t want to walk in the dark.”

He learned about blues via a radio station beaming out of Nashville.

“We had us an old battery radio,” he says. The family “wouldn’t let you play it too much, ’cause it cost money to buy batteries. They let you listen to it Sunday nights from 11 to quarter to 12, and that was it.”

It was enough: That was where he first heard the kings of the blues while they were still walking the earth.

“Blind Boy Phillips, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter — all them,” Williams said. “I got tired of spiritual (music) all the time, my mother’s kind of music. I wanted to sing blues. I loved it.”
Music was part of the culture and community. “I remember going to Saturday night’s fish fry, down South back in the day,” Williams says. “Everybody get together and go jump in the river and, man, they catch all kinds of fish. … Saturday night, everybody around come up — guitar players, harmonica players.

“If you could play halfway decent on a Saturday night, you could make a few pennies, ’cause they’d pass around the hat. Everybody would get a quarter; in those days, a quarter was big-time money!”
Williams was still a child when his parents passed away — his father first, then his mother — and he was sent to live with a white family.

“They treated me kind of decent,” Williams says.

Even so, racism was rampant. Williams’ brother came close to being lynched after an altercation with a white shopkeeper over a matter as minor as the price of a soda.

“So what we did to save him was put him in the back of a car and shipped him off to Ohio,” says Williams. “That’s the last time I seen my brother. A few years back, me and Kitty Kat tried to look him up, but we heard he passed away. We don’t know if he had kids or what.”

It was time for a change. “I didn’t want to stay in the South no more,” Williams recalls, “ … and I thought I was pretty decent on the guitar, so came to Harlem, New York, in the ’50s. … Harlem was Harlem in those days — Apollo Theatre Amateur Night and all that. I got a little band together called the Magnificent Six. We played every which way. We opened for Otis Redding in Philadelphia — we were big-time stuff!”

It was the era of matching suits and immaculate processed hair — and a sense of musical professionalism to go with the look.

“I practiced night after night,” Williams says, “and I had to work (a day job) too, cause playing guitar wasn’t gonna cut it, you know what I mean? I wanted things in life, so that’s the way it was.”
After scrambling for a living in Harlem — and losing several close friends to drugs — Williams arrived in Albany in the 1960s.

“I didn’t know anything of upstate whatsoever,” he says. “I thought New York (City) was it.”
Williams first passed through while on his way to tour in Canada as the bass player with the acclaimed funk group the Ohio Players. “Coming back, I stopped in Albany, and I said to myself, `This is the place I wants to be.’ Fishing, Saratoga, Lake George — and you didn’t have to lock down your doors and nail down the window every time you stepped out. That’s the way it was in the city.”

He brought his band along as well: “They came up here, the whole group, to the Jolly Inn down South Pearl Street. I played at the Jolly Inn for 18 years — I never took my amplifier out. I set it up and it stayed there.

In Albany in those days, “every corner was a bar” eager for a smoking live act.

Williams began working with a more racially mixed lineup of musicians, including now-familiar local names such as guitarist Mark Emanatian and sax player Steve Lynch. “Mark had a little amplifier,” says Williams “I said, `Use my amp — that ain’t strong enough to do what we do here.’ He was good, but a little on the green side.”

Even so, Emanatian helped Williams find regular gigs at a wider range of nightspots.
The blues master has come a long way, from playing seedy bars near the Port of Albany to opening for Aretha Franklin, Patti Labelle and B.B. King at the Palace Theatre (“I sit on his bus and we talk about the good old days”). He’s ventured outside of Albany for high-profile performances at the House of Blues and Buddy Guy’s club in Chicago.

“Albany’s been great to me,” he says. “ … I had more good times than I had bad times. But the thing is I overcome all the bad times, and kept stepping on.

“I guess I’ll be doing it ’til I die.”

Woodstock-based musician David Malachowski is a regular contributor to the Times Union.